, by 91亚色 sociology Professor Luin Goldring and University of Toronto sociology Professor Patricia Landolt, was published Tuesday by the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP). Given recent major changes in Canada鈥檚 immigration system, including large increases in the number of temporary foreign workers and new pathways to permanent residence, this finding has important implications, says Goldring.

Luin Goldring

The study authors define precarious work as employment that is insecure and of lower quality. They point out that immigrants with these types of jobs are often exposed to labour practices that 鈥渆rode, violate or evade employment standards.鈥� This is especially of concern in a context where 鈥渁 growing number of newcomers spend time navigating various forms of temporary and probationary legal status before they can apply for permanent residence,鈥� while others remain in a temporary category or stay in Canada without work or residence authorization.

The authors鈥� quantitative and qualitative analyses are based on original data from a sample of 300 Latin American and Caribbean immigrant workers in the Greater Toronto Area. A key finding is that exposure to precarious work during the initial period in Canada had a lasting negative impact on these workers. As they put it, the effects of living with precarious legal status can be 鈥渟ticky鈥�; the transition to secure status 鈥渄oes not put people on par with those who entered with secure status.鈥�

In light of this, Goldring and Landolt identify several ways to mitigate the effects of precarious status on immigrant economic outcomes, including faster transitions to secure legal status and permanent residence, open work permits for temporary migrant workers, improvements in workplace equity and broader access to settlement services.

The Impact of Precarious Legal Status on Immigrants鈥� Economic Outcomes by Goldring and Landolt can be downloaded free of charge from the 鈥檚 website.

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Ferguson鈥檚 talk will take place Oct. 24, from noon to 2pm, at 163 Behavioural Science Building, Keele campus. The event, sponsored by the LaMarsh Centre for Child & Youth Research, is open to everyone, but an RSVP is requested.

A Jamaican-born psychologist who researches the identity and well-being of Caribbean youth, a major aim of聽鈥檚 research is to identify protective factors for the positive development of Caribbean youth and families across the diaspora.

Ferguson, a professor in the Department of Human聽& Community Development, will share findings from her most recent research project, The Culture and Family Life Study, which investigated the culture and adjustment of Jamaican immigrant adolescents and parents living in the United States, compared with Jamaican families on the island and native-born American families in the US.

Her work has been published in leading regional and international journals including the Caribbean Journal of Psychology, Child Development and the International Journal of Behavioral Development. In 2007, Ferguson was invited by the Ottawa television program 鈥淐aribbean Calendar鈥� to deliver a seminar on youth well-being to the local Jamaican community, an event which was later broadcast.

To RSVP, e-mail lamarsh@yorku.ca. For more information, visit the LaMarsh Centre for Child & Youth Research website.

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Take a glimpse into someone鈥檚 life that is otherwise invisible to most, wrote in a story about the groundbreaking, web-based work Out My Window, by the National Film Board of Canada, that offers glimpses of lives within housing developments:

Zanillya Maria Farrell is a musician and the daughter of the recently deceased singer Bobby Farrell of the disco group Boney M. Many would label her part of the huge, immigrant community in a southeast corner of Amsterdam and stop there. But her story, although unique, symbolizes the dramatic changes happening in cities around the world.In the groundbreaking, Web-based work Out My Window by the National Film Board of Canada, Farrell鈥檚 story is one of 13 offering glimpses of lives within otherwise anonymous housing developments.

. . .

[Director Katerina] Cizek and [NFB producer Gerry] Flahive are also collaborating with academic research on how cities are changing, such as the multiyear at 91亚色鈥檚 City Institute, which looks at how cities have inverted: The suburbs are now the lower-income peripheries and the inner city is the wealthier urban core.

Many people in this changing suburban periphery 鈥渄on鈥檛 have cars. They鈥檙e not stereotypically suburban. ... They are invisible, to some extent politically invisible. But they are also physically invisible because they are not living in Chinatown or Little Italy. They are living in these anonymous high-rise blocks,鈥� Flahive says.

鈥淎nd that鈥檚 a really good place for documentaries,鈥� he adds. 鈥淭he overall Highrise project is not about architecture and urban planning. Primarily, it鈥檚 about how people live. The attempt is to peel back some of those stereotypes.鈥�

The individual segments for Out My Window were made by local photographers and crews, with Cizek often directing the segments from thousands of kilometres away in Toronto via Skype, e-mails and phone calls.

Yet, for all of its emphasis on technology, Cizek and Flahive are actually going for something far older: A non-linear way of telling the story of people鈥檚 lives in the lower-income high-rises, doing so in the way people in the real world perceive things, in small dollops of information, rather than regular, documentary-length stories.

The Global Suburbanisms Project is led by Professor Roger Keil in the Faculty of Environmental Studies and funded by the (SSHRC).

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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The study, published today in the journal , follows up on a 2007 study led by 91亚色, which found that lifelong use of two or more languages keeps symptoms of Alzheimer鈥檚 and other forms of dementia at bay (see YFile, Jan. 15, 2007).

Led by the , the current study examined the clinical records of more than 200 patients diagnosed with probable Alzheimer鈥檚 disease in the Sam & Ida Ross Memory Clinic at Toronto鈥檚 Baycrest Research Centre for Aging and the Brain.

"All the patients in the study had been diagnosed with Alzheimer鈥檚, so clearly bilingualism does not prevent the onset of dementia," says study co-author Ellen Bialystok (right), Distinguished Research Professor of psychology in 91亚色鈥檚 and associate scientist at the Rotman Research Institute, which is part of Baycrest.

"Instead, our results show that people who have been lifelong bilinguals have built up a cognitive reserve that allows them to cope with the disease for a longer period of time before showing symptoms," she says.

While the brains of bilingual patients did show deterioration, researchers believe that the use of more than one language equips them with compensatory skills that keep symptoms like memory loss and confusion in check.

The research team included Fergus Craik, senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute, and Dr. Morris Freedman, professor in the University of Toronto鈥檚 Faculty of Medicine (Neurology), and scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. They found that bilingual patients were diagnosed with Alzheimer鈥檚 4.3 years later and had reported the onset of symptoms five years later than those who spoke only one language. The groups were equivalent on measures of cognitive and occupational level; there was no apparent effect of immigration status, and there were no differences between genders.

The Neurology paper replicates findings from the team鈥檚 2007 study led by Bialystok and published in Neuropsychologia. That study examined the clinical records of 184 patients diagnosed with probable Alzheimer鈥檚 and other forms of dementia. It found that bilingual patients delayed the onset of their symptoms by four years compared to monolingual patients.

"Overall, bilingualism should be seen as an important tool for healthy aging, along with exercise, diet, and other lifestyle choices," Bialystok says. "It鈥檚 also another reason to encourage people in multicultural societies like ours to keep speaking their native tongue and pass it along to their children," she says.

The study was funded in part by grants from the (CIHR) and the to 91亚色 and the Rotman Research Institute.

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Flemingdon Park is one of Toronto鈥檚 鈥減riority鈥� areas. Census data from 2001 showed that 71 per cent of the 22,000 residents were immigrants, and 34 per cent lived below the poverty line. The average family lived on less than $45,000 a year.

. . .

Since 2009, the city has spent $1.5-million to create parks and playgrounds in the neighbourhood. But right now, Flemingdon doesn鈥檛 have a bank and its only grocery store is scheduled to open in the fall.

. . .

To help with safety concerns, Toronto Community Housing installed 120 security cameras in Flemingdon Park in 2006, at a cost of close to $1 million. Many cameras have been vandalized, rendering 22 inoperable.

None of these initiatives are likely to break the cycle of violence, according to , a sociology professor in 91亚色鈥檚 and director of the 91亚色 Centre for Education & Community. The way to get through to Flemingdon鈥檚 most vulnerable 鈥� its youth 鈥� is to provide them with opportunities and hope, including better access to education and jobs.

The complete article is .

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, a professor in 91亚色鈥檚 School of Human Resource Management, is the lead researcher for a -funded study which involved interviewing 45 qualified immigrants in Canada, Spain and France. The study looked at the barriers to career development for qualified immigrants in each country, how they coped with them and whether they were able to overcome them.

鈥淭hese are people who consciously made this decision to move to a new country and had the education and resources to do so,鈥� says Zikic. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a highly skilled group.鈥�

Left: Jelena Zikic

The study is one of three in Zikic鈥檚 research project 鈥淚nvestigating Labour Market Experiences of Immigrant Professionals (IPs) in Canada, the Role of Personal and Organizational Barriers to Career Success in the Host Country鈥�. An article based on the study, 鈥淐rossing National Boundaries: A Typology of Qualified Immigrants鈥� Career Orientations鈥�, co-authored by Zikic, Jaime Bonache of the ESADE Business School in Spain and Jean-Luc Cerdin of the ESSEC Business School in France, has been published in the July issue of the .

In terms of experience in dealing with immigrants, Canada is considered the "country of immigrants", Spain is just beginning to get an influx of immigrants,聽and France falls somewhere in between, says Zikic. Despite the differences, what researchers found was that immigrants in each country faced similar significant barriers to the labour market, such as a lack of recognition for their foreign career training and experience, learning how to navigate the labour expectations of a new country, and difficulty creating new social networks and tapping into local resources to assist in finding a job.

鈥淚t is a very challenging journey that these people take. Getting work doesn鈥檛 happen overnight,鈥� says Zikic. 鈥淎 lot of these immigrants had great careers in their own country. They had to give up quite a bit. Many of them had a lot of status, friends, a network, and it all disappeared when they entered the host country.鈥�

The study sought to understand the underlying causes of underemployment for qualified immigrants from professional backgrounds and how they managed physical and psychological mobility.

What they found was the subjective experiences of qualified immigrants were interdependent with the social, economic and cultural realities, such as the structure of local labour markets and the need to retrain. Older immigrants were often more resistant to retraining and re-education, believing they were too old. As a result, they were more disappointed with the experience and had less success in finding work in their field.

Those who embraced the new challenges, about 24 per cent of those interviewed, were extremely positive about career success in the new country, while the majority聽鈥� 49 per cent聽鈥� adapted to their new circumstances and were successful at either adapting their careers or crafting new ones, although many were in survival jobs. The adaptive group understood the reality of having to retrain or get more education and was prepared to deal with the circumstances. 鈥淭hey had this sort of future orientation; they knew good things would come eventually,鈥� says Zikic. The remaining 27 per cent found the obstacles impossible to overcome as they often had psychological barriers as well, such as age or other constraining circumstances.

Immigrants used six strategies in finding work聽鈥� maintaining motivation, managing identity, developing new credentials, developing local know-how, building a new social network and understanding career success 鈥撀燽ut again, how successful they were was dependent on whether they embraced, adapted or resisted the challenges.

鈥淚t鈥檚 incredible how much talent is searching for the right job and a lot of immigrants just give up,鈥� says Zikic. 鈥淲e often call this the brain waste; they鈥檙e underemployed.鈥�

It is important when devising programs for immigrants to keep in mind the interplay between subjective experiences and the objective realities, she says. Most studies look at one or the other, but little has been done on how each affects the other, and more research is needed.

Zikic also notes that in Canada there is a need for more programs that offer occupation-specific mentoring to immigrants, such as聽The Mentoring Partnership聽available through the .

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

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Beginning with the 2011 census, held every five years, Industry Minister Tony Clement is doing away with the mandatory long form, which had been sent to one in five Canadians. The much shorter survey that goes to all Canadians will remain compulsory.

Instead of forcing 20 per cent of the population to fill out the long form under threat of jail time and fines, Clement said a third of Canadians will be sent the long form, which they can voluntarily complete.

But the change has prompted an outcry across the country from people who believe making the long form voluntary will result in less accurate information.

91亚色 Professor Valerie Preston, director of CERIS, told Toronto Community News she is upset with the changes. 鈥淲e have a 97 per cent compliance response to the (mandatory) long form and so it gives us a very complete picture of Canadians. A voluntary survey will not give us anything like that compliance rate. It won鈥檛 even approach it,鈥� she said.

Communities such as recent immigrants and lower-income Canadians who move often will be less likely to fill out a voluntary survey, she added. And less reliable census information could mean the needs of the most vulnerable, such as newcomers to Canada, the elderly, the poor and single parents, will be ignored, she said.

鈥淚鈥檓 very concerned,鈥� she said. 鈥淲ithout that information, how are you going to transfer (government) funds where they are most needed?鈥�

Preston argued reputable public polling firms, which rely on voluntary responses, can start out with a sample of 17,000 possible respondents but only end up getting answers from 1,000 people.

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The study, funded by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada, provides researchers with a unique opportunity to learn about Korean immigrant families in Canada.

Participants must have arrived in Canada between January 2000 and December 2009, and have been married with at least one school-aged child (five to 18 years) at the time of arrival. Participants will be asked to complete a confidential survey, which will take about 60 to 90 minutes to complete, and will be provided with a small honorarium.

To join the study or for more information, contact Young-Ah Kim, TKFS research coordinator, at ext. 22678 or tkfs@yorku.ca.

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To kick-start National Nursing Week and highlight the province鈥檚 announcement to introduce another 14 nurse practitioner-led clinics in Ontario, Premier Dalton McGuinty dropped in on a group of nursing students at 91亚色 Monday, May 10.

In a room set up like a hospital or clinic, McGuinty went from bed to bed chatting with students practising different medical procedures before sitting down for a round-table discussion with undergraduate nursing students and graduate students in the nurse practitioner program.

The government announced Monday it is accepting applications to create 14 more nurse practitioner-led clinics, with a goal of having 25 such clinics by 2012. The first 11 clinics are scheduled to begin opening this month.

Meanwhile, students shared their stories about why they are studying nursing.

鈥淣ursing chose me,鈥� said Crystal Van Leeuwen, who decided on her career while holding a girl infected with HIV during a trip to a Thailand clinic.

Deana Ruddell-Thomson said she was a retail manager in Walkerton when the tainted water tragedy struck a decade ago. 鈥淚 felt helpless watching friends and family becoming ill and I didn鈥檛 have any power,鈥� she said.

Thomas McCormick said he will be working on a placement in Toronto before heading to northern Ontario to help more remote communities.

Several international students told McGuinty how thrilled they were to be able to study nursing in Ontario. The premier told the students that they have chosen an important career.

The complete article is .

The School of Nursing鈥檚 faculty members are involved in innovative and leading-edge research, and have established national and international reputations in their areas of expertise. Faculty members鈥� programs of research and scholarly activities contribute to better understanding of current and challenging health and nursing phenomena.

Faculty members鈥� scholarly activities encompass a range of areas (including, but not limited to, community health, environmental health, global health, health policy, homeless populations, immigrant health, mental health, women鈥檚 health) and cross the life span (children, youth, adults, and older adults), using diverse theoretical and methodological approaches.

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Diabetes risk among immigrants from South Asia is three to four times higher than in immigrants from western European countries, says a study released Monday by the .

But , a well published 91亚色 professor in the School of Health Policy & Management in the Faculty of Health, says he has been studying the same finding for years. 鈥淛ust about every group in Canada outside of white European people are identified as having a greater risk for Type 2 diabetes and it鈥檚 even higher around the world in populations where they鈥檙e having difficult life circumstances with poverty and equality,鈥� Raphael said.

鈥淚f you want to understand which populations around the world are more likely to have diabetes, it鈥檚 usually people with difficult life circumstances. The one commonality is all these groups experience greater unemployment, greater poverty and greater stress as immigrants,鈥� Raphael said.

Raphael said the solution to curbing the risk of diabetes in immigrant populations is to ensure everyone has enough economic resources to have a better quality of life.

The

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